Archive for the ‘Raid’ Category

This blog post will be slightly different from my previous entries. In this post I will do my best to explain the different types of Crowd Control found in Lord of the Rings Online.

Daze
The Daze is probably the most common type of CC used in group content. A Daze freezes a mob in place, and makes them unable to perform any action. Daze skills in the game have a duration from a few seconds up to 30 seconds. Some classes can keep single mobs perma-dazed, as it does not trigger any immunity at the end of its duration.
Damage will however break a daze, so be careful with the AoE.

Stun
The Stun behaves almost exactly like the Daze, the exception being that a Stun is not broken by damage. Therefore, Stun skills in the game usually have a much shorter duration than Daze skills. A Stun will also trigger immunity at the end of its duration, where the mob cannot be either Stunned or Dazed for a few seconds.
Some classes’ Stun skills will also trigger a Fellowship Manuevre.

Root
A Root will, as the name suggests, root a mob in place. The mob will still be able to perform actions, and most mobs will ignore the aggro table if rooted. Any player coming within range of the Rooted mobs will be attacked, regardless of aggro. Rooting ranged mobs serves no purpose unless Line of Sight is also broken.
Roots are typically broken from damage being done to the mob, although there can be skills with only a certain percentage chance of being broken on damage. Monster Player Wargs, and some types of mobs in the game have the ability to perma-root players. To break the perma root the mob usually needs to be interrupted or Dazed/Stunned.

Fear
Fears send a mob fleeing, and renders them unable to perform any action. While Fears can be good for temporary CC, i.e. getting a mob off a healer, it can also become quite chaotic if you send multiple mobs running in fear, and can complicate aggro pickup for tanks. Fears are broken by damage.
Players, or Monster Players, in PvP can be feared, but will still be able to move around freely, but will be uncapable of performing any actions.

If you feel I missed something, or feel I’ve got something wrong, please post a comment!

It appears update 14 brought not only Gondor to us, it also brought back the challenge of T2 and T2C instances!

The last couple of years the level of challenge in instances has been reduced, time and time again. It started with RoR, and went completely overboard in HD. This, along with other factors such as the Trait trees, and Turbines decision to not make any traditional instanced group content drove away many people from the game. But with update 14 something happened.

Our tactical mitigation contribution from Vitality had already been removed in an earlier update, but given the difficulty of T2 and T2C stuff, this was probably not something many thought of. And then comes update 14, which has increased the difficulty in instanced group content significantly.

While T1 is still pretty easy, T2 and T2C content has been ramped up so much, that there’s been several topics created around it on the official forums.

But there’s not just complints, as even in these threads, people are not only saying that despite the increased difficulty these instances can be completed by a good group, they’re actually showing it. In fact, there’s a thread created for just that purpose! I can’t even remember the last time there was one of those threads on the official forums.

There has also been several threads created just to thank Turbine for giving us the challenge back in instances.
Like this one, and this one.

I haven’t had much time to do instances myself since U14, and the ones I have done have been T1’s, but I can’t wait to try out some of the old instances again with the difficulty ramped up. It was so long ago since Lotro had a real challenge, so I will probably suck pretty badly until I get into it again. Just imagine, you might actually have instances where you need stat food, potions, scrolls and hope tokens. Where you actually have to pay attention to interupts and corruptions. Where you might actually wipe your group if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.

After Helms Deep I only levelled up 2 out of my 10 chars at 85 to 95, it just felt like there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to level the rest. Now, I have started to level my alts again, because I just can’t wait to get my hands on these “new” challenges.

Let’s just hope that Turbine doesn’t listen to the few complainers (that probably should stay with the T1 instances) and nerf everything back in to oblivion before I get my chars capped and geared.

So thanks to CSTM’s facebook page, I found this, a collection of screenshots from Lotro, all the way back from early beta.

I started playing Lotro in January 2009, and has since then managed to snap almost 1000 screenshots. I recently went through all my old computers/harddrives, to make sure none of my old screenshots would get lost.

So why not share a bunch of them?

2009-11-20 – The very first screenshot I found, may very well have been the first I took. My hunter posing in Evendim

2009-11-22 – Oh, that old place! Probably the first time I ventured in there

2009-12-12 – Planning raids and smoking pipes in the Kinhsip house

2010-01-06 – My captain has found his look-a-like!

2010-01-17 – All dressed up and nowhere to go!

2010-09-12 – DN, low resolution and lots on the screen.

2010-11-02 – Crowded auctioneer in 21st hall

2010-12-05 – School, or is it Library? Never could keep those two apart

I’ve been quiet for quite some time now, but there’s been a good reason for it.

I’ve been in the Helms Deep Beta since Beta1, and simply didn’t want to risk breaking the NDA by mistake. But today the NDA has been dropped, and I think it’s time I give my view on what can be expected Nov 18 when HD rolls out.

Class revamp
It’s been known for quite some time now that there would be a major class revamp with Helms Deep. I completely understand the reason why the decision to revamp the classes this way was made, but I can tell you that I am very, very dissapointed in the way it’s been done.
You will not recognize your class anymore.
Hybrid builds will barely exist
Many of your skills will be gone.

I’ve played this game for almost five years now, and in that time I have gotten to know, and learned to love, the classes in this game. I love the way I have a massive array of skills to choose from, and the fact that I have had the option to choose exactly what traits I’ve wanted. And I would actually say that this is what really sets Lotro apart from many other MMO’s.

The problem with this system is that while this was all well and balanced at 60, or even 65, it has now become evident that most classes are actually very overpowered. Just take a look at the champion, they have 2 big bubbles, a full morale heal, massive single target and AOE dps. It’s going to be really difficult to create challenging endgame content when all classes are basically godmode. So under normal circumstances, I would actually be ok with this change, because even if it’s poorly implemented (which it unfortunately is), it’s something that needed to happen sooner or later.

But if the reason for the changes to the classes were to enable the developers to once again create challenging content for the players, why is there no such endgame coming with Helms Deep?

Because noone in their right mind will be able to call the Epic Battles and endgame. First of all, you can start them at level 10, so what’s the point of raising the level cap to 95 in the first place? There is no new endgame that actually requires you to be at the level cap, and there’s no such endgame in sight either, as Turbine have stated that the Epic Battles is the only group content planned for HD.

The only reason I see to level up to 95 would be to experience the old scaled content with the nine new classes we get with this expansion, it’s just a shame I won’t ever get to try them again with the nine old classes, because they are gone forever.

How Turbine could go forward with these changes after the uproar among beta testers from day one is beyond me, and it really proves that Turbine has completely stopped listening to a major part of their players.

I’m sure there will be a major boost in player numbers when HD goes live, there always is when a new expansion comes. But that boost will pale in comparison to the drop of players we will see within a few months of the release. Turbine has already gotten rid of a large chunk of raiders and PvP’ers, and now the axe comes down hard on those who have endured the hard times of horrible RoR lair-raids and massive lag in Etten in the hopes of brighter times ahead. But instead of actually fixing what is broken in the game they throw more things noone asked for at us.

I have not bought HD, and have no intention of doing so, paying that much for another 3 books of the epic quest line and a few glorifed skirmishes is something I wont do. I will probably play for quite some time yet as no other (released) game has really caught my interest, but I think that I will probably spend most of my time creep side until the day it’s time for me to find another game.

The server restart a few days ago did help a bit with the horrible lag in raids and pvp, but it only made it better, it’s still not good.

The lag is really killing the raid v raid action in Etten, as long as it’s just a few soloers on each side there’s not much problems, but last time I checked this was a massive multiplayer game.

It’s not equally bad in PvE raids, but it’s bad enough. The last two friday nights has been Flight T2C attempt-nights for me, and when the summoner waves spawn, everything stops for a few seconds. And while I can’t really claim that the lag was the reason for any of the wipes, I can’t rule out that it was the reason for all of them either. There’s too many players, mobs and mechanics to say for sure, but the lag sure isn’t making it easier.

A big GZ to Les gardiens de la tour blanche for getting the World First on Flight T2C

There’s also been reports of an increase of lag in Flight since U11.2. This evening I will be in a T2C attempt, and if there’s as much lag as people have reported it will make this instance even harder.

As promised todays post will be about Flight to the lonely Mountain. This is probably one of the most hated raids in Lotro history, and there are several reasons for it. For starters it’s a lair raid, just like the other Erebor raids, and they are generally disliked (Watcher would probably be the exception). But not only is it a lair raid, but there’s also no real boss, just trash mobs, and in general that just gives it the feel of one of the regular quest instances where you guard against attacking enemies (but without any NPC’s helping you). Flight also got of on a bad start, and was taken down almost immediately after release due to bugs in it. It stayed down for quite some time upsetting a lot of people not being able to complete their deeds. It also meant that the raiding kinships couldn’t even start their T2C attempts.

Another thing that makes this raid unlikeable is probably the huge differance in difficulty on T1/T2/C. This raid is probably the easiest raid out there on T1, where you just have to stack a few champs on the spawn point to aoe everything down, but becomes quite a tricky raid on T2, where you have to keep mobs alive, place the groups correctly and above all DPS the right targets in the right order. On T2C this might just be one of the toughest raids in the game, it has after all not been completed by anybody yet. If this is because of the difficulty, or because there’s less dedicated raiders now could be discussed, but I know that there is top raiding kinships that did try it for a long time without success.

What amazes me is that many of the raiding kinships have now stopped trying. I could understand it if T2C had actually been beaten by someone, but right now world first can still be claimed.

I’m not in a raiding kinship myself, but I raid on a regular basis with another kinship, and even after our many, many tries, we have not given up. There is individual players that has, but we still manage (if barely) to get people to still run it. The problem we have right now, is that we never have the same people, if we could have the same 12 every try, we would probably be a lot closer to completing it than we are now. The kinship I raid with cannot get people enough by itself to run it, so there’s where I, and some others, come in, but every single time we actually have to PuG the last 1-3 spots. That means that the whole fight, and tactics, must be explained once again, stealing time from actually being in there doing our stuff. We tried a brand new tactic last Friday and Sunday, and it seems really promising. Hopefully we’ll get some more time testing it this Friday.

The thing I would like to see is that the kinships that stopped trying it would post their strategies on the official forums. Since they no longer benefit from any of that information themselves anymore, it could be a nice thing to let other people (that are still trying) take part of their tactics, and perhaps above all, why they didn’t work. I could understand if kinships still trying it would keep their mouths shut, since you wouldn’t want to give away the world first to someone else by giving them the last piece of the puzzle, but if you don’t even have any intentions of trying it anymore, please share!

It would really suck if this raid wasn’t completed before Helms Deep arrive.

In a time when many blogs about Lotro closes down, I have decided to re-open mine. I’ts been 2½ years since my last post, but I still play, and love, Lotro.

My focus in the game has switched a bit the last couple of years, and so will the content of this blog. Expect the content of this blog to be about class optimization, PvP (creep & freep) and endgame raiding.

Now you may wonder if the Lotro community really needs a blog about PvP and raiding, the two things left furthest behind right now. Well, no one ever really needs a blog do they? I just want to show the community that there is someone out there still interested in the group-based endgame things in Lotro.

I will keep this first post short, since I’m posting it from my phone, but I’ll be back soon again, and then I will talk to you about Flight T2C.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t been much in Ettemoors. My Hunter has been there some time, but mostly as a supporting role in a raid. Tracking nasty wargs and trying my best too shoot from a distance. So when my PVP weapons on my Warden had finally reached a decent level (enough to max out my Careful Step duration & Javelin toss range) i went out there.

PVP with a Warden is very very different from a Hunter. First of all, there’s the incoming damage, not only does my Warden have 30-40% more morale than my hunter, but also some awesome Block/Evade/Parry rating (esp with Shield Mastery up). And dealing damage is quite different too, first of all the Warden has the super awesome Careful Step+Ambush combo which means that you can basically get the creep down to 50% morale before it can start doing damage itself. And with the Javelin toss range maxed out, the range is only slightly shorter than a Hunters range. Soloing is not only possible with a Warden, but also quite fun, with a Hunter (atleast for me) it was neither. But also grouping with a Warden is more fun. It’s lovely to be the one knocking down an enemy with Ambush, and see the rest of the raid finish it off.

Coming into melee range is quite different. You need to know exactly where your two-gambit icons are, one mistake building a gambit in the Moors will very likely end badly, there’s just not enough time to start over. My meele PVP weapon doesn’t deal very much damage yet either (Javelin toss range felt a whole lot more important to get up to max).

On a final note, I got my last piece in the Spear-Shaker set for my Warden yesterday. It’s nice to finally have 150 radiance, and that Recklessness set bonus will be awesome in PVP.